Welcome to Texts With Tea! Here, I hope to explore texts and literature that are of interest to me, rather that be sinology texts, wuxia novels, history books, and more! I am planning on doing some English translations with commentary for some classical Chinese texts published long ago. Stay tuned!
How to Fortune-Tell with Dominoes
While doing some research to learn more about the dice game of Cee-lo. I stumbled on a paper by Stewart Culin, an American ethnographer, on Chinese games involving dice and dominoes. Scanning through it, I found a section, titled “FORTUNE TELLING WITH DOMINOES” which piqued my interest. However, the section did not go into specifics, […]
Comparisons Between the 5 Paragraph Essay and Baguwen (8-Legged Essay)
If you grew up in America and went to a public school, you likely learned how to write the famous five paragraph essay. What is the five paragraph essay? It’s composed of a paragraph for the introduction and your thesis statement, three paragraphs for evidence to support your thesis statement, and finally a paragraph for […]
Book Review of the Smiling Proud Wanderer by Jin Yong
There’s one word that I want to use to describe this novel: Sobering. In The Smiling Proud Wanderer by Jing Yong, we follow the adventures of the main protagonist, Linghu Chong, as he goes from a happy-go-lucky martial arts practitioner to facing the real world where he has to deal with the nasty world of […]
Bazi, the Four Pillars of Destiny: A Comprehensive Guide
Bazi explained, how it relates to the Chinese zodiac, and much more. The Four Pillars of Destiny, also known as Bazi (八字), is a Chinese fortune telling technique that attempts to calculate your fate based on the day and time you were born. Your birth chart will consist of four pillars/columns, one for the year, […]
My Path to Learning Classical Chinese
My path to learning Classical Chinese, also known as literary Chinese, is one that has been going on for several years. Growing up going to Chinese school every week, I’d say I can read the average Chinese book published nowadays without any major problems. Reading books that are written in Classical Chinese, however, is a […]
10 Steps to Learning Chinese Philosophy
How to learn Chinese philosophy? This seems like a daunting task at first glance. However, it need not be so difficult if you have a good approach to learning it. I will give some recommendations and provide some of my own experiences on how I approached learning Chinese philosophy that I hope will be helpful […]